Chapter 21 #3
She didn’t want to do this anymore. Had she ever wanted to do it?
Or had she simply grabbed at the first job presented to her and made a success of it through sheer will and fear of failure?
She knew what Em would say, and worse, she couldn’t avoid the suddenly overwhelming suspicion that Em was right.
But god, her parents were so proud. Their golden girl, Georgie had called her, and it wasn’t the first time.
Ivy set her fork down as tears threatened, hot and prickling behind her eyes.
She had no right to cry. She had a good job that she was good at, and it kept a roof over her head, and she had a family that loved and supported her no matter what she did, and…
when she thought about sticking around and doing PR for ANB for the next two years, her stomach dropped, a deep pit forming beneath her ribs.
Her brain went blank and buzzy with an odd combination of boredom and panic, and those tears went from threatening to gathering.
Staring down at her plate, she willed them not to fall. But of course, her mother had noticed them anyway. “What’s wrong, darling?”
Ivy cleared her throat and looked up to find them all looking at her. Concern creased her father’s forehead, and her mother leaned across the table and squeezed her hand.
“I’m just thinking about Opa,” Ivy said. And it wasn’t strictly a lie. She had been thinking about him a lot lately. “He would have loved New York. That show, especially. I miss him.”
“Yeah,” her dad said quietly. “I think he would have. And he would have been proud of what you did over there, too.”
For god’s sake. Ivy looked at her father, feeling half desperate.
The buzzy blankness in her head had been replaced by something loud and urgent, like an alarm sounding so loudly that surely everyone else could hear it, too.
Perhaps something of what she was feeling showed on her face, because her father’s frown deepened, and then he lifted his napkin from his lap and set it next to his plate.
He flicked a glance at her mother, then looked back at Ivy.
“Boys, go clean the barbeque for me, would you, please?”
“I’m still eating,” Luke objected through a mouthful of vegetables.
“Your food’ll be here when you’re done,” Ivy’s mother said.
“Because no one else could possibly eat that much,” George muttered. “Off you go, Lukie.”
Luke swallowed and stood, giving his brother a look that was the equivalent of a middle finger.
“You too, please, George.”
“Dad, cleaning the barbeque is not a two-man job,” George protested.
“It is when only one of those men has ever done a real job,” Luke grinned. “Off you go, Georgie.”
George rolled his eyes, but he stood, too, and Luke opened the back door and gestured him through it with an elaborate parody of a bow.
Once George had slid the door shut with a dull thud, Ivy’s father looked over his shoulder to check that the two of them had gotten to work, then turned back to face her.
“What’s the matter?” her mother asked gently.
“Nothing’s the matter.” The words flew off Ivy’s tongue without a second thought.
She resisted the urge to keep talking, to reassure them and herself.
Everything is fine, I am figuring it out, I have it under control.
Nothing to worry about, nothing to see here.
I am the responsible, successful child who has a real job and doesn’t chew with her mouth open.
“Ivy, honey. Please tell us. What’s the matter?
” His voice was gentle, too, but something in his tone told her he wasn’t going to accept a denial or a brush-off or a half-truth.
She was reminded that as much as she was her Opa’s granddaughter, her dad was his son.
And if stubbornness was genetic, he’d inherited just as much of it as she had, if not more.
Hadn’t she seen that stubbornness in him every time he served his wife the best cut of meat and kissed her when he handed over her plate?
“You guys keep saying how proud you are,” she said softly, and she couldn’t believe she was complaining about this. How many people spent their whole lives hoping to hear those words even once?
“Because we are. We think you’re wonderful.”
“But what if I weren’t? What if I were bad at this job?
What if I weren’t a golden girl?” she said miserably.
God, she hated that phrase, and the matter-of-fact inevitability in George’s voice when he said it, as though Ivy would never not be golden.
As though, if she weren’t golden, Ivy would not be Ivy.
Her father was quiet for a moment. “We’re always going to think you’re wonderful. Your job doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
“But you keep talking about it.”
“Because it’s important to you,” her mother said. “Just like journalism was important to you, and ballet. We care about the things that are important to you because we care about you.”
Ivy swiped away the tears that had escaped down her cheeks. “What if it’s not important to me? I mean,” she sniffed, “I need to work. I need a career and I need to pay rent, but what if I don’t like this job? I think I could be good at it, but what if it feels empty?”
What if she felt empty?
“Then you find something else. You’re talented and hardworking, and you’re a hell of a writer. There are lots of things you could do.”
Ivy nodded, blinking through more tears. Her dad sighed and wrapped an arm around her mum’s shoulder. She sniffed and wiped at a tear, too.
“I’m sorry if we’ve made too big a deal about the job,” he said heavily. “We are proud of you. But I suppose… I suppose we were also relieved that you bounced back as quickly as you did this time.”
Ivy looked up into his lined face, so like her opa’s. Somehow, she knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“When you stopped dancing, you were so sad. It was hard to watch you struggle like that. It was like a part of you had disappeared, or died.”
“The brightest, most beautiful part of you,” her mother added.
“It broke our hearts. All we wanted was for you to feel better, and to be yourself again. We were really worried about you some days. Opa was, too. We tried everything we could to help you feel better and see that there would be life after ballet, but there were some days where we were afraid you’d never be your old self again.
So this time, when you lost your job… I guess your dad and I worried that it would be ballet all over again.
And when it wasn’t, we were so relieved. And, yes, proud.”
“We never meant to put pressure on you. We want you to succeed, of course, but we never want you to feel like there’s no room to stumble. You’re only human. You’re going to make mistakes and come up short. We all do.”
Ivy nodded. She knew that. She didn’t always believe it, but she knew it.
“But you are a success story,” her dad pressed. “You got out of bed, and started from scratch, and you built yourself a whole new career.”
“That got pulled out from under me.”
“Yes. An enormous disappointment. Not a failure. Not something you had any control over. And look at what you did. You picked yourself back up again and found something new, something you’re good at.
And alright, you don’t like it. That’s fine.
You can stick with it and see if you come to like it, or you can move on.
Whatever you do, you’ll be successful. Not because everything always goes right, but because you, Ivy Edwina Page, are your opa’s granddaughter.
You don’t give up when other people would. ”
Ivy’s heart twisted in her chest at the mention of her grandfather, and the memory of his twinkling, knowing eyes.
His rueful smile that told you he had all the answers to life’s questions, big and small.
He would have known what to do. He would have told her exactly what to do, and she would have resisted it at first—just like she had when he told her ballet teacher she’d help out at the studio—but eventually she’d have realized he was right.
And if she hadn’t come round, well, he wouldn’t have given up on her.
“I miss him,” she said quietly.
“I know,” her dad replied. “Every day.” Ivy looked up and saw that his eyes, which usually held some of his father’s knowing sparkle, were shining.
“He wouldn’t want me to quit,” she almost whispered the words. “He wanted so badly for us to make something of ourselves, me and Luke and George.”
“No, he wanted us to build happy, meaningful lives for ourselves. That’s what he did, even after he lost everything.
It wasn’t the life he expected to have, but he thought it was beautiful.
That’s what he wanted for me, and that’s what I got.
Look at you all.” He gestured beside him at his daughter and his beloved wife, then behind him at his two sons, who were no doubt bickering on the back deck.
“Beautiful.” He smiled to himself. “Opa didn’t want you to do ballet because he wanted you to be a dancer, he wanted you to do it because he knew that dancing made your life beautiful.
I think he’d tell you that if finding a new job is going to help you build a beautiful life, then do it. ”
Her dad pulled a tissue from his pocket and handed it to her.
For as long as she could remember, he had kept a tissue in his pocket, ready to hand over when one of them was crying or bleeding or covered in chocolate ice cream.
Or in Luke’s case, on one memorable day, all three at once.
Ivy dabbed at her nose and gave her parents a grateful, watery smile.
A beautiful life, she thought, as she looked out the bus window on the way back to her apartment.
Back to Justin, she hoped. It was hours now since he’d gone out on his walk, and she hoped he was already back at her place.
Dozing on her couch, perhaps, while he waited for her to get home.
Eager to hear about lunch and tell her about how his family were doing.
Ready to help her figure out what came next, if she asked him to.
Yes, she thought, smiling to herself. That would be beautiful.